Find the pages on your site that bring you the most traffic
See if your traffic is increasing or decreasing (and by how much)
Identify other sites and search engines that send you traffic
Understand your average engagement rate, page views, and time on site
Pro tip: Connect Google Analytics with Google Search Console. When you do, you’ll see helpful SEO information right inside your Google Analytics account.
Yoast is the most popular SEO plugin on the planet.
And for good reason.
Yoast makes it super easy to optimize your WordPress site for search engines. And you can use it on Shopify too.
It also helps you with technical SEO stuff, like robots.txt and sitemaps. Making it super versatile.
And ideal for beginners that need an all-in-one SEO solution.
5. Identify Your Project’s KPIs
Along with getting the right tools in place, you need to understand what you want to achieve with your SEO efforts.
Here are some common key performance indicators (KPIs) to consider:
Organic traffic: Driving more traffic to your website from search results can lead to more engagement with your brand. And more sales for your business.
Brand awareness: Enhanced visibility in search results can boost your brand awareness. Building trust with potential customers.
Backlink growth: Getting more high-quality backlinks can improve your site’s authority. And help you rank higher in search results, in turn driving more traffic to your website.
Keyword rankings: Monitoring where your pages rank for target keywords helps you quickly adapt to drops. And capitalize on gains.
But you can also get even more granular by monitoring elements like bounce rate and page load time.
And, of course, tracking sales is a vital KPI for businesses as well. Helping you match up your SEO efforts with direct results for your business.
Understanding what you plan to achieve through SEO makes it much easier to track your results.
6. Set Up Rank Tracking
If one of your KPIs for measuring your SEO success is keyword rankings (which it probably should be), you’ll need to set up a rank tracker.
There are lots of rank tracking tools to choose from. And there are even options for local businesses.
Like Semrush’s Map Rank Tracker. Which lets you keep track of your local business’s rankings down to the street level.
Tracking your rankings in search results can help you understand if the rest of your SEO efforts are working.
7. Get a Free Semrush Account
One of the first tools you need in your SEO arsenal is Semrush. Even the free version can provide a ton of value.
Here’s why:
You Can Spy on Your Competitors
First off, a free Semrush account lets you peek into your competitors’ SEO strategies.
Analyze their top keywords, backlinks, and organic performance. Find out what’s working for them and use that intel to boost your own strategy.
It Helps You Fix Your Site’s Issues
Secondly, you can run site audits to catch and fix technical SEO problems like broken links and slow page speeds.
The free account allows you to crawl up to 100 pages, ensuring your site is optimized for search engines and users alike.
With a free Semrush account, you can analyze your backlinks to understand your site’s authority and identify bad links that could harm your rankings.
Even at the free level, Semrush equips you with essential tools for getting started with SEO. Once you see the value, you can always upgrade to unlock even more features.
Keyword Research is the foundation of SEO. And in this checklist we’ll show you how to quickly find relevant keywords that your potential customers search for.
8. Identify Your Target Market
Before you can find the right keywords to target, you need to understand who is searching for them. And what they are looking to learn/gain from the content they find (also known as the search intent).
Consider:
Who your ideal customer is: What does the customer profile look like of someone buying your product or service? What language do they use and what kind of content do they consume?
What their pain points are: What problems are they facing? How can you help solve those issues?
What platforms they hang out on: Are they searching for things related to what you sell? Or are they more likely to be active on social media?
What they search for: If they are actively searching for your kinds of products/services/content, what terms do they use?
The next steps will show you how to find these terms.
9. Discover Long Tail Keywords with “Google Suggest”
That way, you can choose low-competition keywords that are easy to rank for. And you can understand which keywords are likely to yield the best results for your website.
13. Find Question Keywords
Question keywords are PERFECT for blog posts and articles.
It lets you analyze Google Search Console keyword data to see what topics you’re already ranking for. And to identify related topics where you lack coverage. (i.e., opportunities where you could rank higher and get more traffic.)
This helps you spot gaps in your content and find opportunities to expand your topical authority.
On-Page SEO Checklist
Now it’s time to optimize your content using a handful of tested on-page SEO techniques.
15. Include Your Keyword in Your URL
Your URL helps Google understand what your page is all about. Plus, a keyword-rich URL can improve your organic CTR.
That’s why you want to include your keyword in your URL.
For example, the target keyword for this page is “SEO checklist.”
And those links show Google that our content is well-referenced and trustworthy.
It won’t necessarily improve your rankings. But it can help provide a better user experience.
24. Use Internal Links
This is super simple:
Whenever you publish a new piece of content, try and link to 2-5 other (relevant) pages on your site.
Pro tip: Use keyword-rich anchor text in your internal links.
For example, note how we use the anchor text “on-page SEO” in this internal link:
This tells search engines and users that the page we’re linking to is about on-page SEO.
Giving Google helpful context. And telling the reader where the linked page will take them.
Content Checklist
There’s no denying it: if you want to rank in Google, you need to publish high-quality content.
That’s why content is now a BIG part of any modern-day SEO strategy. And in this section we’ll show you the exact steps to creating the type of content that ranks well.
25. Chunk Your Content to Maximize Readability
No one likes reading giant walls of text:
That’s why we ALWAYS break our content into easy-to-read chunks, like this:
These chunks keep our bounce rate low. And keep our readers on our pages for longer.
So that they can get maximum value from our content.
26. Focus on Content Formats That Are Working Right Now
What’s trending in the world of content (like in any industry) is always changing.
Staying on top of what’s working right now is your best chance at creating content people actually want to consume.
For example, with the rise of AI writing tools leading to a lot of low-quality content out there, it’s clear that people value:
Content written by experts
Original research (like surveys and industry studies)
We personally tested and reviewed 41 tools. It was an insane amount of work.
But it was totally worth it.
Why?
To date, this post has generated over 11 thousand backlinks.
27. Think about Information Gain
Covering a topic in depth is no longer enough to sustainably rank well on Google. You can’t just toss together a piece made up of the top-ranking posts’ H2s and call it good.
You need to add value beyond what the current search results contain.
Otherwise:
Why should Google rank your content? And why should readers trust your content over everyone else’s?
Technical SEO can make or break your rankings. Fortunately, fixing technical SEO problems isn’t that hard. Especially if you follow the items on this checklist.
29. Identify Crawling and Indexing Errors
A crawl error means that Google and its search engine bots are having trouble viewing a page on your site.
And if it can’t view your page, it’s not gonna rank for anything.
Indexing errors mean Google can find your content. But it’s not indexing it for some reason.
Which still means no ranking.
You can easily find these errors in Google Search Console’s “Indexing” report:
If you notice Google is having trouble accessing one of your important webpages (for example, robots.txt is blocking search engine crawlers), you’ll want to fix that ASAP.
30. Find Out How Google Views Your Pages
Sometimes users can see everything on your page…
…but Google can’t.
Again:
If Google can’t fully access your page, it won’t rank.
That’s why we recommend using Google Search Console’s “Inspect URL” feature.
Just enter a page from your site at the top of GSC.
When you do, you’ll see your page from Google’s point of view:
If you see issues like indexing not allowed or different canonical URLs, you have some problems to solve.
This free tool lets you know how quickly your site loads for desktop and mobile users. And whether you’re passing each of the Core Web Vitals:
It even lets you know what you can do to speed things up.
35. Use Schema Markup
Schema markup (or structured data) helps search engines understand your content better. And it can help you land rich snippets in search results. Like these star ratings and recipe time:
When it comes to SEO, link building is KEY. They have long been used in Google’s ranking systems as a way of understanding website quality and as a measure of authority.
Unfortunately, building links isn’t easy. But if you want to rank in Google, links are a must. And in this section we’ll show you how to do it.
36. Contribute Expert Quotes to Media Outlets
Media outlets (from newspapers to blogs) are always looking for sources for stories they’re publishing.
If you’re a subject matter expert, you can be a source for those stories. And in return, you can get a link to your website.
There are various platforms, like Connectively (formerly HARO) and Help a B2B Writer, that aim to connect writers with sources.
But you can also run searches like “#journorequest” along with your niche on social media to find potential opportunities.
37. Create Linkable Assets for Journalists (Digital PR)
In a similar vein to becoming a source for a journalist’s article, you can also create content directly for journalists. Or for them to hopefully pick up in their own stories.
This is often called digital PR, and one method is to create linkable assets (or link bait).
These are pieces of content that are super easy to link to. Either because they reveal interesting data, contain original insights and reports, or are otherwise entertaining.
“Narrow it down as much as you can. Don’t create low quality and no value add pages. It’s just not worth it because one thing is that we don’t necessarily want to index those pages. We think that it’s a waste of resources. The other thing is that you just won’t get quality traffic. If you don’t get quality traffic then why are you burning resources on it?”
This is why we make sure that every page on this site is super high-quality.
Despite the fact that this quality over quantity approach clearly works, we see A LOT of sites struggle with “dead weight” pages.